'Blue Lives Murder' Shirts Sold On Amazon; Law Enforcement Cries Foul

Law enforcement officers have cried foul after discovering that Amazon is still selling anti-cop merchandise printed with the slogan “Blue Lives Murder,” a year after similar gear surfaced on the e-commerce giant.

In a letter sent by the Detectives’ Endowment Association, a detective’s union in New York City, officials demanded Amazon to stop selling the “disgusting” items, warning the e-commerce company that the merchandise could potentially put cops’ lives in danger.

“It has come to my attention that your website is selling tee-shirts (sic) and other items emblazoned with the words ‘Blue Lives Murder,'” DEA Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky wrote in a letter obtained by The New York Post.

“It’s disheartening that your company would allow this disgusting motto on your sales platform.”

Amazon has been selling a number of anti-cop merchandise, including an $8.99 black polyester face mask, T-shirts, and hoodies featuring the “Blue Lives Murder” or “Cops Lie, Record Everything” slogans. Another $18.99 T-shirt also featured the message “Blue Lives Aren’t Real.”

In the letter, Olsavsky argued that merchandise using the anti-cop slogan could “invite further division, hatred, and violence toward the hard-working men and women of the nation’s police departments, who are toiling every day to keep their communities safe.”

The letter also noted an Amazon policy that prohibited the listing of products that “promote, incite, or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance, or promote organization with such views.”

In 2020, a company named COTINAC sold T-shirts with the “Blue Lives Murder” message emblazoned on the front for $19.99 plus shipping relating to the killing of African-American George Floyd who died after former police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for almost nine minutes in Minneapolis on May 25 that year.

“It shows that [Amazon is] bending over backwards for this movement like many other companies are. That’s not OK,” Sgt. Joe Imperatrice of New York City said at the time. “No reason to let something like this slip through the cracks. This is making people believe it’s OK to have this mentality and it’s not.”

The e-commerce giant later took down the products and the page of the seller.

Amazon has previously taken down several racist, anti-Semitic, and sexist products from its website. In July 2020, Amazon, along with Google and Wish, removed neo-Nazi books, Ku Klux Klan items, and other white-supremacist merchandise from their platforms.

In August, the e-commerce giant pulled some items that promoted racist propaganda, including “Joe and Hoe” shirts that referred to then-presidential nominee Joe Biden and then-vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.